The first season of Preacher ends where the comic book begins, with Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper0, Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) and Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) on a road trip to find God. Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC
In the season finale of Preacher, Rev. Custer’s congregation met an imposter who was literally playing God. Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC
Graham McTavish plays “The Cowboy” – or as he’s known in the comics, “the Saint of Killers” – on “Preacher.” Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/Sony Pictures Television/AMC
By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
(Spoiler Alert: This column discusses the events of the “Preacher” season ender.)
So you’re sitting on the couch, watching the season finale of Preacher July 31, and suddenly everybody dies. “Well, that’s certainly different,” you say to whomever is next to you, or possibly to just the cat as, sadly, you live alone. How, you wonder in the midst of your existential despair, can the show even continue?
First, you need to get out more. Living alone and watching philosophically challenging TV shows by yourself isn’t healthy. Join a book club. Volunteer. Meet some people.
Secondly, the answer to what happens next on Preacher the TV show is going to be based on what happened in the 66 monthly issues, five specials and one miniseries of Preacher the comic book.
Well, sort of.
Here’s what I mean: Preacher Season One ends with the destruction of Annville, with only Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy surviving. (Plus Eugene Root, only he’s in Hell.) And now they’re going on a road trip, executive producer Seth Rogen said on Talking Preacher, in order “to find God … and kick his [behind].”
Which is roughly where the comic book began. In other words, the first season of Preacher was, essentially, a prequel. But why?
“There are so many crazy ideas in the show that in the comic kinda happen very fast,” Rogen said. “They’re just kinda thrown at you very fast. The idea of a demon and an angel having a baby and going into a guy – it’s very abstract, if you are not a big comic book reader. We thought it would be better to dole it out in a much more digestible pace and at the same time give a lot more emotional backstory to Jesse and who he is and see him be a preacher, which was something which you never really see in the comics at all.”
Also, Rogen said, he wanted you to meet all the quirky people of Annville – Civil War re-enactor Donnie, his rough-sex-loving wife Betsy, suppressed and unhappy Emily, traumatized Annville Meat and Power CEO Odin Quincannon, morally conflicted Sheriff Root, the star-crossed Indian and Prairie Dog mascots, Tulip’s perpetually drunken uncle, half-brained Tracy Loach, etc. – so it would mean something to you when they died. The producers wanted you to “grow emotional attachment with these people before we kill them off,” Rogen laughed.
And they are very, very dead. All of them, even those whose stories don’t seem over. Executive producer Evan Goldberg confirmed as much on Talking Preacher, as executive producer Sam Catlin did on Deadline Hollywood (deadline.com). You can even see Betsy’s legs sticking out of the rubble, still dressed as Dorothy of Oz, with one ruby slipper dangling from her foot.
Unless, of course, the producers are lying. Which is possible. After all, Quincannon plays an important role in the comics, but not until around the middle of the story. So maybe he’ll make a surprise return.
Nonetheless, the final episode gave us some more pieces in the puzzle that is Preacher.
The story of The Cowboy, called “The Saint of Killers” in the comic book, finally linked up with the main story. His story on the show varies a bit from that of the comics, but what he is hasn’t changed. He’s still a post-human creature, the Angel of Death. He’s still capable of killing anything -- angels, demons, Genesis, God – and he’s after Jesse.
“He’s just the person who damned himself worse than anybody ever,” Goldberg said on Talking Preacher. “And he did something so unforgivable that you can never see how he could ever possibly redeem himself, and nor can he, so he just goes to such a depraved level that it shocked me. And I made the show.”
Also, we discover that God is missing. In a scene reminiscent of a Monty Python skit or Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a stereotype image of God appears in the Annville church to assure everyone that everything is okey-dokey – only to be exposed as a fraud. The real God is absent, the imposter reveals, inspiring Jesse’s road trip.
It also inspires a lot of Annville residents to do some terrible things, in my nomination for Most Depressing Montage in TV History. But it doesn’t really matter, since they’re all going to die anyway. (Although I will not soon forget Meat Baby.)
So now we begin the narrative with which readers of Preacher the comic book have long been familiar. And despite the eye-popping violence, absurdist humor and profane concepts in the first season … well, that’s just the beginning. As Goldberg admits, “the comic goes a little far sometimes.”
Here’s some characters from the comics you might see in upcoming Preacher episodes:
* The Grail, led by the too-fat-to-move Allfather D’Arnonique, the organization that has guarded the bloodline of Jesus Christ for centuries, and now sees its opportunity for ultimate power.
* Herr Starr, the chief enforcer of The Grail, an ascetic German with some kinky habits of his own, whose own odyssey is hilariously disgusting, or maybe disgustingly hilarious.
* Gran’ma (Marie L’Angelle), Jesse’s actual grandmother, a religious fanatic and one of the worst human beings you’ll ever meet, which includes her loathsome thugs Jody and T.C.
* The Chunt Brothers: A trio of cannibal siblings.
* Bob Glover and Freddy Allen, sexual investigators: You really don’t want to know.
Some of these characters, and more besides, may be too extreme for television, even for a network that airs The Walking Dead. But we’ve already seen Herr Starr – he’s listed as “The Man in White Suit” in the third episode -- so who knows?
What we do know is what kind of show the producers intend.
“It is a quest,” Catlin said on Talking Preacher. “Season One is sort of a theological, intellectual quest for God, but in Season Two it becomes an actual ‘We’re gonna find God.’ Jesse makes it very clear, ‘we’re gonna help him or we’re gonna kick his [behind].’”
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Replies
All in all, I was quite pleased with the season one finale. If the show were not to go on, I would be completely satisfied with this (open) ending. I said before that I bought the first issue of Preacher when it first came out, didn’t like it, gave it away. I later read most of the rest of the series, loaned to me by the person I gave the first issue to, and came to appreciate it. But I do have another copy of issue #1: one of the “Millennium Edition” reprints offered throughout the year 2000. I pulled it out of the box to reread, but so far I’ve read only the first three pages. Man, that’s exactly where season one left off! I like the comic’s Jesse better (Cassidy is virtually identical), but the comic’s Tulip now seems a little “off” to me.
The relationships between the principal three is a bit different than in the comics. I don't recall why Tulip was hanging out with Cassidy and Jesse in the beginning -- she was furious with Jesse, and wanted nothing to do with him romantically. Jesse, of course, had other ideas. She eventually caved -- one of the many tone-deaf ways Tulip was handled -- but that's totally different than the TV show, where Tulip is the aggressor but both acknowledge something there/unfinished business. Plus, on TV Cassidy has a thing for Tulip, which didn't exist in the comics -- although that triangle may explain some things that did happen in the comics toward the end, if they are re-used on the show.
As I read somewhere, I think today's audiences are more sophisticated than they used to be, and expect that adaptations are going to be different from their source material. (Twenty years ago they'd get bent out of shape -- heck, "the book was better" was such a cliche that MAD would use it as a punchline in the '30s!) Many people seem eager to find source material now after seeing/reading an adaptation, knowing it will be a different experience but with characters they've come to love.
There are still some fanboys, I assume, who get bent out of shape when a movie or TV show doesn't get "their" Daredevil or X-Men or whatever just so. But most of us, I think, appreciate that different media have different storytelling requirements.
Heck, I may like Preacher on TV more than the source material, like I do The Walking Dead. Sometimes material changes from one media to another because of storytelling needs, but also sometimes taking a second shot at some material improves it just because it's an opportunity to fix earlier mistakes.
Captain Comics said:
She eventually caved -- one of the many tone-deaf ways Tulip was handled -- but that's totally different than the TV show....
I think the Tulip from the comics was never as strong as the one from the TV series. IIRC, she wound up with Cassidy after she thought Jesse was gone forever. Cassidy, being Cassidy, took advantage.
There are still some fanboys, I assume, who get bent out of shape when a movie or TV show doesn't get "their" Daredevil or X-Men or whatever just so. But most of us, I think, appreciate that different media have different storytelling requirements.
I think that as long as the people adapting a book or comic book to the screen respect the material the adaptation will stand up. In the earlier (dark) times when screenwriters and directors didn't respect the material we got some pretty bad versions of beloved characters. Even though there are many differences between the Preacher comics and the show, like I've said before, the tone is right. Doing it the right way is more likely to draw readers to the original material, which should be important to those of us who love comics. Minor tweaks to characters and events don't destroy this opportunity.
Are you saying Reb Brown on a motorcycle wasn't the most awesome Captain America you've ever seen?
Captain Comics said:
Are you saying Reb Brown on a motorcycle wasn't the most awesome Captain America you've ever seen?
So far, I have successfully avoided the Reb Brown Captain America movie and the Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie.
All right. I read Preacher #1 over the weekend for (I think) the third time. The first time I didn’t like it; the second time I “came to appreciate” it; but the third time I genuinely liked it. I may continue.
The Dolph Lundren Punisher movie actually wasn't too bad. He played a Frank Castle with an actual death wish.